1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods for manufacturing a transition metal-carbon nanotube hybrid material, and more particularly, to a method for manufacturing a transition metal-carbon nanotube hybrid material using a highly reactive nitrogen present in a carbon nanotube as a medium without using additional surface treatment or inhibitors.
A carbon nanotube has a nanotube-structural material having excellent thermal, mechanical and electrical characteristics and draws an attention as a material applicable in various fields. Furthermore, in case that a transition metal is attached to a carbon nanotube, it may be used as a hybrid material capable of improving the characteristics owned by the carbon nanotube itself or expressing new characteristics. When it comes to the application of the transition metal-carbon nanotube hybrid material, it is known to be used as a gas sensor, a hydrogen storage material, a catalyst material, an electron emitter, a composite material for structure and a nano device. In manufacturing such transition metal-carbon nanotube hybrid material, it is important to uniformly distribute the transition metals with well controlled sizes.
2. Description of the Related Art
The conventional methods for manufacturing transition metal-carbon nanotube hybrid materials include a method using a metal steam, (Y. Zang et. al., Appl. Phys. Lett., 77, 3015, 2005), an electric chemical plating (B. N. Quinn et. al., J. Am. Chem. Soc., 127, 6146, 2005) and a method for attaching a metal salt to the surface of carbon nanotube and reducing it (G. Che et. al., Nature, 393, 346, 1997). The method using metal stem requires a high production cost and is difficult to obtain a uniform distribution. In an electric chemical plating method and a method reducing a metal salt, a carbon nanotube is chemically safe so that a process for activating the outer wall of the carbon nanotube is included in both methods and it is difficult to control the size of a transition metal nano particle because of just resulting in the transition nano particle above 5 nm, therefore inhibitors are often used. In light of a real application, both methods show limitations in time and costs. Moreover, because the solution used in the activation process has a strong oxidation characteristic, the carbon nanotube may be severely damaged and is not the environment-friendly.